http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
SECRETARY OF STATE Colin Powell rebuked Israel last week for
sending tanks and bulldozers into Gaza following Palestinian mortar
attacks on the Israeli town of Sederot. "The Israeli response," he
said, "was excessive and disproportionate." Of his own "Powell
Doctrine," which prescribes overwhelming force when there is a military
objective to be achieved, he made no mention. He was almost as
reticent about the Palestinian violence that triggered the Israeli
move, describing it merely as "provocative." Would he be similarly
understated, one wonders, if Mexican terrorists, abetted by the Mexican
government, began shelling Laredo and El Paso?

What was "excessive and disproportionate" last week was Powell's
slap at Israel, not Israel's attempt to protect Jewish communities from
Arab artillery. Unlike the Palestinians attacking them, the Israelis
did not aim their weapons at civilians or deliberately set out to shed
as much blood as possible. They entered Gaza only to stop the
shelling, and made it clear that they had no intention of reoccupying
territory that has been turned over to the Palestinian Authority. If
he had to say anything, Powell should have praised them for their
restraint.

In any case, his slap had its effect: Within hours, Israel's forces
withdrew. Jerusalem claimed that the decision to retreat had been made
before the US reprimand, but no one was fooled. Least of all Yasser
Arafat, who understood that Washington had just given him a green light
to keep trying to kill Jews.

Sure enough, the shelling resumed as soon as the Israelis were out.
Early Wednesday morning, Palestinian mortars began hitting Israeli
targets on both sides of the Green Line; two landed in the schoolyard
at Nevei Dekalim, just before the children showed up for class. By
mid-afternoon, Israeli tanks were back in Gaza, briefly, to demolish a
Palestinian "police" station from which explosives were being fired.
When that failed to stop the shelling, the tanks returned yet again on
Saturday.

These hokey-pokey operations -- you put your ground troops in, you
pull your ground troops out -- will do nothing to enhance Israel's
security, and less than nothing to deter Palestinian violence. As if
to prove the point, a suicide bomber killed one Israeli and wounded 41
more in a rush-hour blast near Tel Aviv on Sunday morning.

Israelis overwhelmingly elected Ariel Sharon prime minister because
he vowed to be tough: to shut down Arafat's terror campaign and to
rehabilitate Israel's reputation for fearsomeness. If he were still
the leader of the opposition, he would bellow with outrage at last
week's cave-in to Powell. His failure to insist on Israel's right to
protect its population from acts of war came across as a dismaying lack
of backbone.

To be sure, no Israeli official wants to pick a fight with the
United States. But Powell does not speak for all Americans. At times
he doesn't even speak for the Bush administration.

Powell's call to continue the Clinton administration's approach to
North Korea, for example, was repudiated by President Bush. So was his
pitch for easing the sanctions against Iraq. In other policy areas --
China, Russia, missile defense -- the administration is plainly divided
between the accommodationist State Department and the conservative
hawks led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Powell's views on the
Middle East may reflect conventional State Department wisdom. But it's
a safe bet that not everyone in the Bush inner circle shares them.

After all, the administration has already made it clear that
settling the Arab-Israeli conflict is not its top priority. Bill
Clinton made a fetish of the "peace process," but Bush, Rumsfeld, and
Vice President Dick Cheney understand that America's real interests in
the Middle East do not revolve around Israel's borders or Arafat's
promises. Washington has more pressing concerns: hostile
dictatorships, Islamist extremism, terrorism, threats to pro-Western
governments, the danger of regional war.

Of all the nations in the Middle East, only Israel stands with
America on each of those issues, just as it is the only one that shares
America's democratic values. Israel is such a key American ally
because of its strategic importance to US security interests. That
importance does not depend on Jerusalem's consent to everything
Washington says about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It *does* depend on
Israel's remaining a potent military power with a deterrent capacity
feared by its enemies. And that in turn sometimes means saying no to
the United States.

In 1948, David Ben Gurion resisted US pressure not to proclaim
Israeli statehood. In 1967, Levi Eshkol, defying US wishes, launched a
preemptive strike against Egypt. In 1981, Menachem Begin braved
American fury to bomb the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak. In each case,
saying no to Washington led to short-term tension in US-Israeli
relations. Yet today even Washington would agree that in each case
Israel was right.

What makes Israel so valuable to America and the free world is its
steadfastness, its strength, and its readiness, when necessary, to
stand alone. Colin Powell may not understand that. But shouldn't
Ariel
Sharon?